Why Mobile and Tablet Bid Adjustments Can Save Your Campaigns

With all of the bid adjustments that Google gives us to use within our Google Adwords interface, there has been one that we as account managers have been asking about for some time. Tablet Bid Adjustments are now live and active within all Google Adwords accounts, and it has been a long time coming for this advantageous bid adjustment capability to finally get at our fingertips.

Mobile Bid Adjustments

Since the introduction of device bid adjustments and the quick growth of mobile devices by anyone and everyone, we have all but had to have Mobile bid adjustments. With more and more mobile users using the web than ever before and growing, there is no wonder why this was an important bid adjustment that needed to be in place. Having the ability to raise and lower a percentage of your original bid can be a great benefit if you use it correctly. There are some industries where mobile device users either do not convert at all or not very well, or the industry that is being advertised is not specific or likely to be searched for using mobile devices. For these types of campaigns where mobile users are not likely to get you very many conversions or sales, the decrease bid adjustment for mobile devices is almost a “must” to put in place to help save you potentially large sums of ad spend, with the results you desire.

There are also industries and campaigns where mobile device users convert approximately 25% of the time vs. 75% computer or desktop traffic. For these types of campaigns the decrease bid adjustment on mobile devices does not need to be drastic, as your main goal is not to shut out mobile traffic, but rather to just have the mobile traffic cost less to meet your ROI goals. By setting the right mobile bid adjustment you could potentially remain in a high average position, and pay dollars less in cost per click to achieve the visibility you need to keep your mobile traffic coming in as normal quantities as your other device traffic. These bid adjustments when set correctly can be like night and day when you start comparing your historical data when you had no device bid adjustment, to your most recent data after implementing your mobile bid adjustments.

Tablet Bid Adjustments

With the most recent addition of Tablet bid adjustments you now have full control over your device bid increases and decrease within your Google Adwords interface. For the longest time our tablet bids were primarily determined by whatever you had as your Computer traffic bid. As you segmented the data from week to week you could see your device traffic divided into their own line of Mobile, Tablet, and Computer. When comparing the Computer traffic costs per click and the Tablet traffic costs per click, you would often see fairly close numbers between the two. And I am sure that there are many times when looking over your weekly or monthly data where you see the tablet traffic costs per click costing more than the computer traffic costs per click. Until now there just was not anything we could do about it. But finally Google releases the Tablet Bid Adjustments within our Device bid adjustments section of the Campaign Settings. Now you have full control of your bid increases and decrease when it comes to the Tablet traffic.

When we think about the makeup of Tablets, they are basically extra-large mobile devices but not quite the size of a computer or laptop device. So when websites are displayed on Tablet devices, there is still some sizing that needs to go on with the Responsiveness of the website to get the menus, images, and other parts of the website to fit and look right on the tablet devices. With Tablet growing in popularity, we may see another big push or spike in Tablet traffic that may be similar to the outrageous growth we saw years back with the huge spike in Mobile traffic. However, even if the Tablet remains as the “third wheel” so to speak of the device traffic, it is great to know that we all have full control of the bid adjustments across all devices now.

Computer Bid Adjustments

Although we have been begging and screaming for Mobile device bid adjustments and Tablet bid adjustments for quite some time now, Google has given us an extra bid adjustment to play around with inside of our Google Adwords campaigns. Computer Bid Adjustments are now live as well to go along with the release of the new Tablet bid adjustments feature. This computer device bid adjustment can all but ensure that your total campaigns output will be truly separate on any device out of or even inside your campaigns. With each bid adjustment adjustable up to 100% increase or decrease, you can completely shut off any device’s traffic from any given campaign within the campaign setting tab.

It might seem somewhat weird that there is a computer bid adjustment option in our settings, but when you look at how many accounts are more Mobile specific, it just makes sense you would want all of the capabilities within your control to decrease or even completely shut off Tablet and Computer traffic. This can also be said for Computer traffic and Tablet traffic for that matter, in having full on control of shutting off another device as a simple decrease of 100% within the settings.

So with all of the new capabilities that Google has given us for our Device Bid Adjustment needs, it is simple to see how “Mobile, Tablet, and Computer Bid Adjustments Can Save Your Campaigns”, and even your business.

– Bobby Pena, PPC Manager

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